The Chicken Isn't People (But It's Still Disgusting)
by INMH
Summary: Jimmy's first lunch at Bullworth. There is definitely something up with the chicken. Also, Gary learns the meaning of the word karma. Warning: Strong Language, Vomiting (Not particularly detailed).


The Chicken Isn't People (But It's Still Disgusting)  
**Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Genre:** Humor/General/Hurt/Comfort  
**Summary:** Jimmy's first lunch at Bullworth. There is definitely something up with the chicken. Also, Gary learns the meaning of the word _karma_. Warning: Strong Language, Vomiting (Not particularly detailed).  
**Author's Note:** God, but I miss this fandom. I need to replay this game soon.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bully. It belongs to Rockstar Games.

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"There's something wrong with the chicken."

Jimmy stopped chewing and glanced down at the meat on his tray. True, it wasn't the most appealing food item he had ever seen, but his mother's cooking wasn't exactly gourmet either. The most he'd had since arriving at Bullworth was a candy bar and a few sodas, so he wasn't exactly in a position to be picky.

Gary took another bite of his chicken as though he hadn't heard the smaller boy. "It's Edna's food, Petey: Of course there's something wrong with it. I'm surprised Slawter hasn't had us examining any of this in the lab."

Jimmy slowly resumed his chewing, even though Petey still seemed to be bothered. Petey might have been a geek, but the benefit of geeks was that they usually knew what they were talking about. If Petey pushed the issue, he'd dump his tray and start looking into ways to make enough money for some off-campus food. In any case, he wasn't unaccustomed to going hungry every now and then.

"I don't think chicken is supposed to have gray on it, Gary." Petey twisted his cut of chicken so that Gary and Jimmy could see the gray streak in the interior.

Jimmy blinked, grimaced, and then quickly picked up his napkin and spit what was currently in his mouth into it. He pushed his tray away, and Gary snorted at him.

"Oh, come on. Edna handed out burgers once that looked blue in the right light. A little gray on some chicken isn't going to kill anyone."

"Are you a doctor?" Petey countered. "Or a chef? How would you know if a piece of food is dangerous or not?"

"No one's making you eat it, Petey!" Gary retorted breezily.

Petey was quiet after that. From the looks of it, though, he had already eaten some of the supposedly bad meat. And the closer Jimmy looked, he noticed that Petey was starting to look progressively paler as time went on. Whether it was disgust at the tainted meat or actual illness remained to be seen. "You all right, Petey?"

"Mhm." He was pushing the corn on his plate around with his fork. It looked even less appetizing than the gray chicken.

"So, Edna- she's the lunch lady?" Jimmy directed the question at Gary, and nodded towards the kitchen where said lunch lady was working.

"Yup. Whatever you do, don't piss her off."

"I'm no brain, but even I know not to piss off the person who makes your food." Pissing off his mother had actually been what led Jimmy to learning to cook on his own. He wasn't fantastic at it, but he was damn well better than her. "So is she just a bad cook, or does she try to turn all the students into Kermit the Frog wannabes?" He jerked his thumb towards Petey, who had set his head down on his folded arms and seemed to have checked out of the conversation.

"Pretty sure it's both." Gary didn't seem to be even slightly perturbed by the idea. "She acts nice enough, but calls everyone snot-nosed brats, little monsters, etc, etc."

"Is it true?"

Gary snorted. "In Bullworth? Ninety-nine percent true. We're all little shits down here, James."

"There _is_ something wrong with the chicken." Petey muttered just loud enough for Jimmy and Gary to hear. "I don't feel good."

Gary rolled his eyes again and groaned. "Oh my _God_, you are just the most delicate little flower-princess ever, aren't you Petey? Last week it was the broccoli, before that it was the macaroni, now it's the chicken! You've been eating the food for three years and you _still_ haven't built up a tolerance?" He turned to Jimmy. "What about you, Jimmy? You have a stomach of steel, or a stomach of tissue paper?"

The analogy was a bit weird, and Jimmy shrugged. "Eh. I'm not usually picky." Though he wasn't stupid, either: Eating meat with gray in the middle fell right under the heading of 'bad idea' for him. Biology was not his best subject, but even he knew that willpower alone couldn't save you from bad meat.

"Good! Because even the food in town is crap- or rather, the food _you'll_ be able to afford. The stuff that isn't loaded on grease is a bit above the payroll of any student not getting money from their parents." Whether Gary was guessing or somehow knew that Jimmy wouldn't be getting money from his mother or stepfather was unclear, but true. And even if he was starving half to death, they would be his last resort.

Abruptly, Petey jumped up from the table and ran over to the trashcans, where he began to wretch violently. Right on cue, the rest of the cafeteria either burst into laughter or started shrieking in disgust; from where he was sitting, Jimmy could see that Edna didn't seem to be disturbed in the slightest (possibly because it was a common occurrence, if Gary was right).

Jimmy felt a pang of sympathy for the other boy, knowing very well the ridicule of being That One Kid Who Threw Up at School That One Time. Gary, like Edna, was unperturbed, and the rest of the cafeteria was too busy playing the peanut gallery, and so- like with so many other things- Jimmy saw that he would have to be the one to do something about it.

"Where's the nurse's office?" He inquired with a sigh, swinging himself around so that he could stand up.

"Front of the building, to the right of the main entrance from here." Gary had finished eating and was bending the tines of his plastic fork.

"You done?" Jimmy muttered, dumping his tray into the trashcan beside the one Petey had just vomited into. The kid looked like death, pale and shaking. _Damn, but that chicken_. "Come on, then. Nurse." Was all Jimmy said before grabbing the sleeve of Petey's shirt and tugging him towards the door.

"Tough luck, Petey!" Gary called cheerfully as Jimmy hauled Petey out of the cafeteria. "Maybe if you weren't such a delicate flower your stomach would be able to handle a little bit of mold!"

It was fitting, perhaps, that Jimmy found Gary in similar shape in the dorm later on that evening, hunched over the garbage can in his and Petey's shared room and calling Edna-and Jimmy, when the other boy snickered at him- every name in the book.

-End


End file.
